The first time I heard about you, I was in Runtown, at the Don Villa, waiting to see the President. The people I was sitting with at the lobby had described you in a despicable manner with words that have refused to leave my head ever since. They said you were a strong woman, never one to falter at the face of death. They said you oversaw the coup that out-threw the last President and seated this one. They said you are a distant second cousin to the current President, but your loyalty closed up that relational distance. They said he uses you as an instrument to carry out his evil deeds, so like a spell that must not be discovered by humankind, you remain hidden behind a veil despite being a valiant soldier. They said you once hacked a civilian to death because of some unclear offence perpetrated by the latter. Heck! They even said if you found anyone lurking around the Presidential villa without any definite mission, you would shoot them at first sight. That, Colonel, is an infringement on a countryman’s human rights, but who am I to talk?
The first time I saw you, I had just gained global recognition for writing an article that condemned the Government of President Yasir, expounding on the ill-treatment of the citizens of the Federal Republic of Kendra orchestrated through his government. I had written that article outside the shores of Kendra, amassed public opinion that differed in wavelength, and aroused the anger of more than half of the country’s population, you, being number one. And the moment my feet touched Kendran grounds, I was whisked to the Presidential villa by armed men.
“We’ve been ordered to arrest you with immediate effect, Mr Omo. Co-operate with us and we shall get you to the Presidential villa alive.”
I had been too stunned to say a word. The first thing that came to my mind were my wife and children. If I wasn’t allowed to leave the airport before a group of armed men swarmed me, how much more would my wife, who is a teacher in a public school, have to face? That was the first time, ever, that I feared for my life in my journalism career spanning thirteen years.
From the airport to the Don Villa, it took an hour and thirty minutes, but my mind travelled for much longer. It went to the first day I received my appointment letter at CDC Africa. That was where my journalism career took off and progressed with the speed of light. I had covered many stories and brought many dark ones to light. But now, more than a decade later, the same journalism was taking me into the mouth of the shark.
Even time distends at the face of homecoming, but this was no home.
I wasn’t going to my family in the heart of town. I wasn’t going to my wife’s school to surprise her with my arrival; or my children’s. I wasn’t going to my mother to greet her, bearing gifts from ‘the abroad.’ I was being bundled in daylight to the Presidential villa because I had written an article that tainted the image of the President. The armed men told me to not say anything, so I remained silenced, and squeezed in between their heavily-built bodies inside the mini-van. Their coarse khaki uniforms pierced my skin, and the muzzles of their guns smiled at me horrendously. I could sense their eagerness to be fired.
The first time I met you, I was inside the President’s large office, shaking like an elf that had lost its way. The power I wielded through my pen had wilted at the sight of you. You wore a burqa under which only your two eyes were visible. Other parts of your body were hidden but, I could see that you were holding something under that overflowing burqa. A gun, it turned out, because when the President asked me why I wrote the article and I replied innocently that I was only doing my job, you had raised your gun and aimed it at me. Only then did had I realized that you were in a full camo uniform, your legs branded in soldier boots, and your waist embraced by the thick belt wrung around it. I screamed and begged for mercy, my legs shaking and unable to support me. I fell to the ground and before I knew what was happening, your foot was on my hip, kicking me to stand up now or “I shoot you, motherfucker.”
I stood up.
I saw you at close range for the first time.
Looked into your eyes and saw myself.
But as soon as our eyes made four, you averted my gaze.
“You better cooperate with me, Mr man.” Your voice bore compassion and anger at the same time.
I watched you walk back to your initial position, astride the President’s settee, and standing at attention. You signaled to your junior officers to bundle me out of your sight again.
They kicked and slapped me. Spit at me for committing treason. Insulted me for being a weakling who only knew how to fight with a pen. Bundled and delivered me into the hands of another officer they called the Chief Prison Services Officer (CPSO). From his hands, I was transferred to another set of uniformed men who blindfolded me with a sack bag. My whole world turned black, so black that I could not see my future anymore.
After some tossing here and there and transfers between more hands, through a journey that I can’t even remember how long it lasted, we finally walked into a dark pit somewhere that felt like it was fifteen feet below ground level. It smelt like piss. Instantly, I knew it was a place where other government offenders like myself were sent to. I could hear voices superimposing one another, and whispers too faint for one to make out the words being said. The officers dragged me along and threatened the prisoners to keep shut. We came to a stop suddenly, a key clanked against a metal gate, I was uncuffed, then pushed into a cell forcefully. Only when I crash-landed on the hard floor did the sackcloth over my head give way. Then, one of the inmates helped to remove it completely.
“This one be like person wey go school oh.” He announced to the others and laughter erupted in the cell. It was a small cell, and I made the fourth person.
“Please, where am I?” The question had been on my lips for a long time, and I thought the cell was a much safer place to ask it.
“Prison, Oga. U dey Katako Prison.” He offered a handshake, and when I didn’t take it, kicked me and walked away to a corner.
The others laughed. Some out of pity. Others, in amusement. I could hear laughter from the adjacent cells too. This was no place to be.
For the first time since my arrest, I buried my head in my hands and wailed.
***
The journey of a thousand miles starts with a step, the popular saying goes. But my journey as an inmate started with heavy blows.
Remember the guy that removed my blindfold and told me where I was? He would come back to question me.
Who you be?
Wetin carry you come here?
Who carry your matter go government side?
How u go take dey useful to us for here? Pick a side.
For every time that I delayed getting an answer out of my tired mouth, I received a blow to my chin. Some landed on my jaw. A few on the bridge of my nose, breaking it. There were slaps too. Everything happened in a rush.
I don’t know how you came to know about this but the next time I saw you, you escorted the junior officers into the cell, and had them deal with the huge guy. Lefty, they called him. He was the most notorious of them all. The crime for which he was taken was the gravest of them all. Everyone knew not to fall into the bad graces of Lefty for he will use his left hand to disfigure one’s face. If I had been warned earlier, maybe I wouldn’t have suffered in the hands of one that would bow at my feet were we to meet outside the giant walls of the prison; for with my men, I could make or mar him. And if you hadn’t shown up in time, maybe Lefty’s left hand would have launched me to the left side of life, seamlessly so.
After Lefty was beaten up by the officers, I was dragged out of the cell and taken to the hospital. Your shadow was following my weak body everywhere it went. When my eyelids closed in surrender to the medications administered at the hospital, you were the last person I set my eyes on. Your eyes glistened under the burka that hid your face, and they held my gaze for much longer. Maybe you thought I wasn’t looking at you, because I looked more like a dead man than one on the brink of death. When I woke up, five hours later they said, it was the same glistening eyes that welcomed me back. Yours. The moment you saw my now-wide-open eyes, you left the ward and I heard you riling orders to some men just by the corridor. Then a bunch of officers came inside, helped me up, and dragged me out of bed. Again, came the sack. My face was covered and I was led into a car where I knew you’d be inside already, waiting.
The journey took an hour, or maybe more. My sense of reasoning wasn’t fully back.
When the sack was lifted off my face, I saw myself in a lit room with no openings whatsoever. What exactly was happening? I looked to my left and right, only the stonecold faces of the uniformed men welcomed me. None of the faces were recognizable. I knew you, or rather, the President would not be stupid enough to let my brain register even a single face of your men. So different batches of your men dealt with me at different stages. Now I understood how greatly the President feared the power of my pen.
You too, I know.
Why are you so afraid of showing your face? You won’t keep hiding forever, would you? Show me what you look like and that’s all it’ll take for the whole world to know the errant dog that is doing the Presidents’ dirty jobs. All of them.
As I tried to maintain my balance on the transparent floor, and let my eyes become reacquainted to bright light after hours of darkness, footsteps approached me from behind, and with them came voices. Many voices. I tried to look back and the muzzle of a gun instructed me to face forward. Where were you in all these?
The footsteps stopped right behind me. The officers still had their guns pointed at me, so I could barely turn.
“Sit down,” one of the new voices said right behind me.
That wasn’t you. The voice didn’t sound like you.
“But there’s no seat…” I tried to argue but a hand held my shoulder firmly and pushed me down. Only when my butt hit hardwood did I realise that a chair had materialised right behind me. I writhed in discomfort from the pain that jolted through my nerves. What was happening? I tried to look around, but the fierce faces of the uniformed men slapped me with caution.
I answered my own question when a table was brought before me, with a laptop on top, and a bottle of water beside it.
I was going to write.
“What do you want me to write?” I stammered, dreading the fate that was staring me right in the face. One too many times, I’d heard how they forced captured journalists to re-write their controversial articles verbatim. And for every word missed or misused, when compared to the original article, the journalists would receive a bullet in their body. By the time the torturers would be finished with them, almost all the blood vessels in their bodies would have been ripped open. And when all the blood leaves your body, what remains?
“Please,” I started to cry now like the real coward that I was, “I have a fami…”
“You didn’t think about your family when you were writing the article?” A voice roared from behind.
That was you.
I could never mistake your voice for anything. You came. You came forward. To my front, commanding the other officers to leave us alone. When the room was empty, you roared again.
“Answer me, you…” there was a hesitation, as though you were considering your next statement, before you added, “idiot.”
Now your gun was raised, again revealing the camo you had underneath your burka. I wondered how a woman could be this vicious yet pious? Isn’t it pious women that wore hijabs to cover their bodies? And then those on a higher level of piety don burkas to cover their faces? If you were in this category, why were you also wicked? How did you mix oil with water so perfectly? My face bore questions but my body craved freedom.
“Please,” I clasped my hands together and rubbed them, “I will use this as a warning. Please.” My nose was full of snot in a matter of minutes. “It’ll never happen again.” I begged like a child who was at the mercy of an angry step mother; you.
“It would be better if you put those hands to great use,” you said. Your voice had suddenly become softer, and you’d put down the gun. You rested your hands on the table, and peered into my eyes. You were really so close that I could see my whole frame inside your eyes. Brown eyes. Sparkling irises. Full lashes. A lush stare. Your eyes bore a deep recognition but I was not about to anger you by staring too much. When I was just at the nick of the moment of unravelling your identity, you turned your face away with irritation.
“Now,” you straightened up and lifted your gun again, “start writing the goddamn article.”
Goddamn.
There was one person I knew that was fond of that word.
And it had become a thrown-around word in my house because my eight-year-old won’t stop inserting the word in his vocabulary in mimicry of one of his aunts. But now was not the time to make an analysis.
“Please.” The word refused to come out of my mouth. And even if it had, I was sure you wouldn’t have paid any more attention.
You approached me stealthily, pointed your gun at my skull, and commanded me to start writing or you’d blow my head off.
A snort escaped my nose and landed on my bedraggled shirt. Was this how I was going to die? Like a church rat?
I flipped the laptop open, placed my forefinger on the power button with shaky hands and sweaty palms, then tried to remember the first sentence in the goddamn article. I was surely going to breathe my last today, I thought, as I closed my eyes shut, trying to say my last prayer while envisioning all the beautiful moments I would have had with my family in the future.
I pressed down the power button and sighed, ready to plunge into the bottomless tunnel that would lead me to the great beyond.
And when I opened my eyes, the picture on the laptop’s screensaver welcomed me back to life, or rather, brought me closer to life than any attempt at re-writing the article would have. It was a picture of my wife, Liya, squatting on a mat under a tree, with our two sons, four and one at the time, curled up in her lap, and tossing a thumbs-up at the camera man — my sister, Sewedo. The person behind the camera.
She had taken that picture when she came to visit my family after her six months training at the army camp eleven years ago, right before disappearing into thin air like she never existed. That was the last time we set eyes on each other, and the last we’d heard from each other. I still had the photo on my phone. But what was it doing on this laptop?
In my confusion, I looked up, and met your expectant eyes. A pool of water had formed at the corners of your eyes. This time, you maintained your gaze and made me see into your soul. You desperately wanted for me to see you. To get the message. To know that you never wanted to be on this mission. Your breathing increased and you sounded like a sleeping gorilla. The edges of the burka around your face became wet instantly, and a needle of affection punctured your hoarse voice so it became deflated.
“Broda,” your voice was soft now, much like the voice I knew to be my sister’s long before this new person took over her body, “please start writing the article now.” Your voice was faint and persuasive. “Don’t let me do this.” You added almost immediately, while touching the butt of your gun and then looking away sharply.
A soldier had to behave like one, no matter what.
I looked into the figure in front of me and saw fate. The tears. I let them flow. My eyes. They became foggy. My mind. It stayed sharp.
I must remember the words in my article. I must remember everything verbatim. I must remember, so I don’t die at the hands of my own sister.
And when I started typing, slowly at first, then frantically as though the Grim Reaper was pursuing me with his scythe, I heard you heave a sigh. Was it a sigh of relief, regret, or disdain that your brother had to crawl into this situation with his own two legs, or anger at the fact that you became the President’s errand dog instead of the Chief Commander of the Army that you dreamed of becoming as a little girl? I couldn’t tell.
The only thing I could confirm was that the two differing paths we chose in life had come back to intertwine together.
I continued tapping away at the keyboard while you roamed the room, with your hands dug into your eyes. and fixated on the ceiling.
I knew what you were thinking.